The question I disregarded. It was the disclosure he had bared which appealed to my imagination and fired my curiosity. I said: “Mr. Bagby, I never knew anybody ever called Judge Priest that?”
“No, you natchelly wouldn't,” said the Sergeant—“not onless you'd mebbe overheared some of us old fellers talkin' amongst ourselves sometimes, with no outsiders present. It wouldn't hardly be proper, ever'thing considered, to be referrin' in public to the presidin' judge of the first judicial district of the State of Kintucky by sech a name ez that. Besides which, he ain't little any more. And then, there's still another reason.”
“How did they ever come to call him that in the first place?” I asked.
“Well, young man, it makes quite a tale,” said the Sergeant. With an effort he hauled out his big silver watch, looked at its face, and then wedged it back into a hidden recess under one of the overlapping creases of his waistband.
“He acquired that there title at Shiloh, in the State of Tennessee, and by his own request he parted from it some three years and four months later on the banks of the Rio Grande River, in the Republic of Mexico, I bein' present in pusson on both occasions. But ef you've got time to listen I reckin I've got jest about the time to tell it to you.”
“Yes, sir—if you please.” With eagerness, I hitched my cane-bottomed chair along the porch floor to be nearer him. And then as he seemed not to have heard my assent, I undertook to prompt him. “Er—what were you and Judge Priest doing down in Mexico, Mr. Bagby?”
“Tryin' to git out of the United States of America fur one thing.” A little grin, almost a shamefaced grin, I thought, broke his round moist face up into fat wrinkles. He puckered his eyes in thought, looking out across the languid tawny river toward the green towhead in midstream and the cottonwoods on the far bank, a mile and more away. “But I don't marvel much that you never heared the full circumstances before. Our bein' down in Mexico together that time is a fact we never advertised 'round for common consumption—neither one of us.”
He withdrew his squinted gaze from the hot vista of shores and water and swung his body about to face me, thereafter punctuating his narrative with a blunted forefinger.
“My command was King's Hell Hounds. There ought to be a book written some of these days about whut all King's Hell Hounds done en-durin' of the unpleasantness—it'd make mighty excitin' readin'. But Billy and a right smart chance of the other boys frum this place, they served throughout with Company B of the Old Regiment of mounted infantry. Most of the time frum sixty-one to sixty-five I wasn't throwed with 'em, but jest before the end came we were all consolidated—whut there was remainin' of us—under General Nathan Bedford Forrest down in Mississippi. Fur weeks and months before that, we knowed it was a hopeless fight we were wagin', but somehow we jest kept on. I reckin we'd sort of got into the fightin' habit. Fellers do, you know, sometimes, when the circumstances are favourable, ez in this case.
“Well, here one mornin' in April, came the word frum Virginia that Richmond had fallen, and right on top of that, that Marse Robert had had to surrender. They said, too, that Sherman had Johnston penned off somewheres down in the Carolinas, we didn't know exactly where, and that Johnston would have to give up before many days passed. In fact, he had already give up a week before we finally heared about it. So then accordin' to our best information and belief, that made us the last body of organised Confederates on the east bank of the Mississippi River. That's a thing I was always mighty proud of. I'm proud of it yit.